Good Samaritan Society - Forest City

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received a very impressive nursing score. Nursing actually ended up being its best category. In that category, we gave this nursing home an A. We weighed the qualifications of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time the nurses worked with patients, in calculating our rating in this category. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home Iowa in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning a resident at least once a day.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections. We awarded it an A for that area, which is one of our highest scores. This is one of the few facilities with an overall score in this range which received multiple category grades this high. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this category tend to have few severe deficiencies. While this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This facility is also above average in the area of short-term care, where it was awarded a grade of B+. It performed more favorably than most nursing homes in this area. Our short-term care grades are important for individuals requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a wide scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 4.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The last category we graded was long-term care, in which this facility received a C. This proved to be this nursing home's least impressive category. This is still not a major area of concern. In a long-term care environment, the primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 99.319725 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is better than most nursing homes. This facility was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.